Momentum volunteers at a souvenir stand at The World Transformed.
Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Thousands of people descended on Brighton at the weekend for The World Transformed (TWT), Momentum’s alternative fringe festival that ran alongside the official Labour party conference.

Events were scheduled to span four days in nine venues including bars and clubs. They included panel discussions on topics ranging from the importance of the arts to BAME representation, workshops on how to make viral videos or win a marginal seat, late-night gigs and DJ sets, film screenings during a session called “revolution and chill”, a pub quiz hosted by Ed Miliband, and live interviews with special guests in the style of Channel 4’s TFI Friday.

Set against the backdrop of the Brighton seafront, a region historically at the forefront of cultural change in the UK, organisers placed creative ideas at the centre of the Momentum festival.

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The venues were filled with political graffiti and exhibitions to embolden critical thinking. Many visitors spoke of a renewed confidence in modern politics and the power of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour to transform democracy as we know it. The mood was festive, with activists – many young and new to the game – buoyed by Labour’s unexpected gains in the general election.

Corbynmania was for them less a political position than a gateway to radical social change. It is only through opening up politics to everyone at a grassroots level and community solidarity, they say, and making the connections between the arts and politics, that ordinary people can regain ownership over the decisions that affect them.

Lucas Cumiskey, a 22-year-old graduate from Hornsey, north London, said he travelled to TWT because he wanted to be involved in the discussions and it was more accessible than the Labour conference.

“It’s an opportunity to organise and meet other people, and get our act together for the next election,” Cumiskey said. “I’ve been to the Momentum conference before and I’m involved in my local Labour party in Wood Green.

“I got into politics since Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015. It just felt like for the first time there was someone in contention for a position of power who was representing things that mattered to me, like education and high living standards. It seems criminal that in a country of so much wealth, so many people are in need of food banks.”

Cumiskey warned that all the activists there should not take a Labour victory for granted. “We can’t assume it will happen just because of the incompetence of the Tories. We need to spread a positive message and there needs to be unity within the party,” he said.

Connor Hodgson-Brunniche, a 19-year-old politics and international relations student at the University of York, originally from Newcastle, said TWT provided a space to communicate with other people on the left and within the Labour party from different parts of the country.

“I wouldn’t usually meet them and get a chance to talk about ideas and what we want to achieve,” he said. “I’ve been to talks addressing the question of how we deal with local democracy, how we make the political system more democratic, how we construct a narrative to win people over.”

To win the next election, Hodgson-Brunniche said Labour needs to motivate people with a vision that is appealing, positive and constructive, “one that says the future can be better, that we don’t have to be worse off than our parents’ generation. We don’t have to live in a smaller world where everything’s closed off, and government doesn’t have to be a tool for the very wealthy to screw over the rest of us.

“The political left has finally overcome 20 years of capitalist realism, when there was no alternative narrative and we couldn’t achieve anything. But when Corbyn stepped up and said maybe we could actually do something, same with Bernie Sanders in the US, we began feeling less ineffective. There’s a lot of energy and we feel we can achieve something.

“I don’t mean achieving things in the way of the traditional left of the 20th century, which was mostly authoritarian, and policies were imposed from the top down. This conference is saying that is not what we want to do, the energy has to come from people, from the grassroots; it has to be participatory.”

Corbyn was attractive because he seemed authentic, Hodgson-Brunniche added. “He’s a good leader but not in the traditional sense of someone who leads from the front; he has such a good capacity to listen. He didn’t stand because he wanted to be leader, but he’s the embodiment of the wider movement,” he said.

Alice Fogg, a 20-year-old human geography student at Durham University, from Lincoln, said she saw herself as an anarchist but recognised the importance in grassroots community organising, as well as the importance of art to lay the groundwork for new ideas.

“I started to get more disenfranchised with the political system as time went on. But I can see an event like this changes the places and community around us,” she said. “It’s bringing people together. I get such a great feeling of solidarity. You build these connections. And I’ve realised people are looking out for each other and care about each other.”

Fogg said she did not think Corbyn could fix the system of government in the UK, which she described as “inherently flawed”. “It doesn’t matter who heads it up, it’s bureaucratic. And that makes people apathetic. But if you take action on a horizontal level, people can feel involved,” she said.

“It’s about linking all this together, the Labour party and Corbyn and the grassroots organising. I’ve heard a lot of people at TWT talking about how you organise community groups and the arts, things outside mainstream party politics which build the basis of political systems of the future.

“I’ve just started volunteering in Newcastle to build a cooperative cinema; it’s all volunteer based and it’s pulled all the people in community together. People will be able to put on their shows and workshops, and everyone can use it.

“Art can help people recognise the issues, flag them up, and think about how to solve them. Ken Loach’s films, for example, have a very important social message in them and one hard to replicate in other formats because you get the depth of the struggle. All these things knit together.”

Kieran Glasssmith, a 21-year-old bank administrator from Bristol, said he was interested in learning how to turn Labour from just a parliamentary party into a mass movement.

“Throughout history, mass movements are how change has happened,” he said. “When you have a lot of people unified behind a goal. More than just being out on the street and protesting, but having community solidarity, where you’re helping people out who are having trouble with housing, or by building unions.”

Glasssmith said he had always been a Labour supporter when he was growing up, but began to lose faith in the party. “I didn’t think they were going to solve much, but Corbyn could radically change who has power in society. After he stood, I joined the party and became active in meetings … There’s a lot of ideas being discussed which when I was growing up wouldn’t even be considered within the Labour party; people are using the word socialism,” he said.

He said he thought Labour would win the next election based on the surge in the last poll. “People are very unsatisfied with the government. We mobilised a huge number of people to go out and door-knock. This time, instead of focusing on defending key seats, we’ll be going to seats we think we’ll be able to win if we knock on every door in the city.

“Groups like Momentum have done an incredible job of updating us to the 21st century, through social media and ways of talking to people. But it’s the leftwing policies that are winning people over because they see Labour as actually standing for something.

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“I wouldn’t be interested in being an MP or that business where it’s too easy to get caught up in the Westminster attitude, but working to build mass action to support a Labour government is definitely something I’d consider.”

Tom Pearce, a 25-year-old legal administrator from Bristol, said he joined Momentum in October 2015 because of the groundswell of support around Corbyn’s campaign.

“I joined because the national education policy in particular sounded fantastic. I was at university when the fees went up to £9,000, I saw the first years who were [like] me two years prior paying three times [what I paid], even though there was no change in the course. There wasn’t a recognition of how much debt young people were getting into and the insecurity that comes with that and how that affects mental health.

“I want to be a teacher and I think the education system is poorly funded and the profession is being undervalued.”

Pearce said he voted for the Liberal Democrats in 2015 because he was uninspired. “Now I recognise there are many different things government can and should do, like build enough housing people can live in. I pass so many homeless people in Bristol on the way to work. And we have to make sure we have a fantastic health system, which we’re currently losing.”

He is now involved in the Bristol Momentum group and came to TWT to learn from other groups about how they organise. “There are a lot of people not from Labour or Momentum who come to TWT to build on cooperative movements, which Corbyn embodies,” Pearce said.

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“He’s a good listener and that makes him a good leader. If you work together as a group you can solve a lot of issues in the world. I don’t think tribalism is the way to go. We overcome tribalism in the Labour party by opening up democracy within the party, so everyone has an equal say on the way forwards. The more open the democracy, the more people can get involved and have a say.”

Helen Brewer, a 27-year-old artist and film-maker from London, has been working on a campaign to end mass deportations by charter flights, and came to TWT because members of the campaign were holding a panel discussion.

“We’re here to gain Labour support and to bring the issue of borders, detention and deportation into the conversation, and especially to question Corbyn’s position on immigration,” she said.

Brewer, who grew up in Australia, voted Labour this year for the first time because of Corbyn. “I think he’s authentic,” she said, “but I also think it’s really important that it’s not about the person leading the party, but the party itself. That’s what Momentum is doing: creating the ideals of the party from the people who support it.”

“TWT brings a diverse demographic of people from different backgrounds and ages together, and it feels that there’s a community and spirit surrounding this conference. It’s a way for the radical left to become involved in actually making changes they want to see,” she said.

“It’s still really important to carry on organising and fighting for the kinds of change we believe in, rather than relying on the party to make the changes. Despite all the support Labour is gaining, it’s really important to remain critical.”

Her primary concern, Brewer added, was less about winning an election and more about ensuring there was a platform for voices and campaigns to come together at a grassroots level: “Even if we won there would still be the need to push further left.”